What one week taught me about Creating Hope Together
By Haylis Smith — National Delivery Lead, Suicide Prevention Scotland
Last week was brilliant. I have lots of great weeks in my job, I love the chances I have to meet people from across Scotland (and the world — see my previous blog!) all committed to helping to prevent suicide.
But last week, really captured the essence of Suicide Prevention Scotland’s hope that suicide prevention is everyone’s business.
It started on Monday, with an opportunity to speak at the Community Planning Partnership (CPP) Network in COSLA’s conference centre at Verity House in Edinburgh.
CPP’s bring together the collective efforts and resources of all the services in local authority areas who take part in community planning, with a particular emphasis on inequalities.
Creating Hope Together, the national suicide prevention strategy has a vision is to reduce the number of suicide deaths in Scotland, whilst tackling the inequalities which contribute to suicide, so CPP’s are an important way to work with local areas to help achieve this.
There was a real passion in the room and an eagerness to understand how CPP’s can contribute to creating suicide safer communities. Definitely lots to follow up on.
Monday afternoon brought together a wide range of stakeholders at St Andrew’s House to consider the early findings from the Public Health Scotland review of facilitated suicide prevention and mental health training currently delivered in Scotland.
It was great to hear the views of so many different sectors, all with a desire to ensure we have accessible, sustainable training and learning opportunities available, to build on the work over the last 20 years to raise awareness of suicide, mental health and provide the skills people across Scotland need to help themselves and others.
Tuesday was a trip to Glasgow for the Creating Hope with Peer Support Lived Experience event.
The event brought together lots of different peer support organisations along with members of Suicide Prevention Scotland’s Lived Experience Panel.
It is always a joy to be in a room with such passionate people. It was said a couple of times throughout the day that the Lived Experience Panel is a group you wish you were never part of.
I truly wish that none of them had ever been touched by suicide, but I am incredibly grateful to them all for being willing to share their experiences and their views to help shape all our work over the last few years.
We are in a much better position for it, and I look forward to working with the Lived Experience Panel, the Youth Advisory Group, the Participation Network and the members of United to Prevent Suicide social movement as well as many other partners who were in the room over the coming months and years.
I also joined an online meeting with our Academic Advisory Group (AAG). We are fortunate to have Professor Rory O’Connor and Emeritus Professor Steve Platt jointly chairing this group and some brilliant researchers working alongside them.
Over the last few years, the AAG have undertaken research and provided insight which has helped shape and guide the decisions made about the actions delivered to help achieve our suicide prevention objectives.
It was great to join their meeting and have discussions about areas of future research which will help deliver the outcomes of Creating Hope Together which will include building our understanding of effective interventions to support children and young people and understanding what drives effective change through policy.
Being in Glasgow also allowed me to catch up with my daughters, who are both studying at University of Strathclyde. While sitting eating our tea that evening, my youngest daughter said, ‘my new friends think what you do is amazing mum’.
It’s lovely my daughter talks about me with her pals in something other than embarrassed tones, but it also struck me, that in doing so, she is raising awareness of suicide prevention in her own way. She was six months old when I started working in suicide prevention, so it has been part of their whole lives, we regularly talk openly about suicide and mental health.
Earlier this year, she attended ASIST training in Borders because she wanted to know what to do if someone she came in contact with had thoughts of suicide. Now she’s studying psychology and social policy and through the open discussion of what their mum does for a job, my daughters raise awareness of suicide for their generation, breaking down the stigma and I know helping others along the way.
Wednesday was a trip to Inverness to the launch of Highland’s suicide prevention action plan. The plan demonstrates how CPP’s can work effectively together to create an action plan to address the suicide prevention needs of their community. It was obvious from the number of different organisations from across sectors in the room, that there is a real commitment to making this action plan a reality.
We heard from the national organisation Breathing Space who will be celebrating 20 years of supporting people next year. There were also important contributions from local projects. The first was the nationally funded pilot Suicide Bereavement Support Service supporting people bereaved by suicide and delivered in Highland by Change Mental Health. The second was Mikeysline which provides support to people struggling to cope through face to face and text based services, funded by local people and businesses.
The action plan was launched by the new Chief Executive of Highland Council Derek Brown, who spoke passionately about the need for everyone to play their part and the connection between suicide prevention and trauma informed care.
I wasn’t looking forward to the long trip back home, but the conductor on the train soon changed all that. His humour and friendliness were contagious. The thought of playing rock, paper, scissors to decide who sat in which seat had my whole carriage laughing. He improved everyone’s mood, and we were all sad when he left the train at Perth.
It was an example of how one person can make such a difference to those around him, how kindness is contagious, how we all have the power to make a difference in someone’s life. The conductor made introductions between me and the two people sitting opposite me in the carriageway.
They happened to work for Healthcare Improvement Scotland and were keen to hear about the work we were doing to prevent suicide. They could see where there were connections to the work they were involved in, so we swapped contact details and agreed to follow up the conversations at a later date.
Thursday saw the second meeting of the National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group (NSPAG).
Maree Todd, Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing & Sport and Counsellor Paul Kelly COSLA’s Health and Social Care spokesperson attended, and it was the first opportunity the group had to meet the Strategic Outcome Leads who are leading on delivery of the outcomes in Creating Hope Together.
We discussed how the NSPAG members could use their expertise in their respective fields to support our efforts to reduce suicide and tackle inequalities.
The vision for the strategy describes the need for all sectors to come together in partnership to help reduce suicide deaths and tackle inequalities and it was clear that everyone in the room wants to do all they can to do just that.
The Strategic Outcome Leads and I then joined a meeting of the Suicide Prevention Network. This Network includes local suicide prevention leads and others working across local areas as well as representatives from third sector and national public sector organisations.
The aim of the meeting was to work through the delivery plan for this year and see where there might be opportunities to bring together the national work with the work happening across local areas. We know to achieve success in implementing the strategy and action plan, it will be important to work together, to learn from each other and from the practice on the ground.
This meeting helped to lay the foundations of this and will help us build for the future with lots of connections made.
I know that reducing deaths by suicide doesn’t just rely on the things that happen in one week, to achieve our vision will require ongoing sustained efforts over the long term.
But this past week reminded me of the importance of connection, of working together, of listening to and really hearing everyone’s contributions so we can learn from each other and help create hope, for those affected by suicide.
If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health or feeling suicidal, please don’t hesitate to ask for help by contacting your GP, NHS24 on 111, Samaritans on 116 123 or Breathing Space on 0800 83 85 87.
